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As the appetite for drilling off the coast of Florida increases so do safety concerns. Environmentalists say drilling near the coast would ruin Florida’s beaches. As Whitney Ray tells us, a lot has change in the oil industry since the last domestic spill.

Hear it Here: Not Your Grandfather’s Oil Company?

With four dollar a gallon gas, public opinion about drilling off Florida’s Coast is shifting. So is the Governor’s.

“What we ought to be willing to do is study it,” Crist said Tuesday.
Florida Petroleum Council Executive Director David Mica recognizes the oil industries infamous past, but said things have changed.

“It’s not your grandfather’s oil company anymore,” Mica said.

The oil industry has pumped billions of dollars into high-tech equipment aimed at finding oil, preventing leaks and stopping spills. Newer oil rigs have remote centers to shut down operations in case of an emergency. During Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005 remote centers in Houston, Texas, were used to shut down oil rigs a hundred miles out at sea. Oil rigs survived Katrina with little oil spilled.

“One of the things that happened in Katrina is, while we had very little if any environmental damage, we had significant damage to many of our platforms,” Mica said.

There’s no guarantee against a spill which worries environmentalists.

“People come here for Florida’s beautiful beaches if we drill for oil we run a very high risk that we’ll ruin those beaches with oil spills,” said Eric Draper with Audubon of Florida.

Drilling closer than 125 miles would require a change in federal law. The last major oil spill in America happed almost 40 years ago in Santa Barbara, California. An estimated three million gallons of oil ended up in the Pacific Ocean.